The Laughing Song from “Die Fledermaus”

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

The Laughing Song from Die Fledermaus

One way out of an embarrassing situation is to laugh it off - just as Adele does in Johann Strauss’s comic operetta Die Fledermaus. Adele is a parlour maid who has taken the evening off ostensibly “to visit a sick aunt” but in reality to attend a lavish ball at the villa of Prince Orlofsky, to whom she is introduced as an actress called Olga. As luck would have it, her employer Gabriel von Eisenstein, is at the ball too and recognises her in one of his wife’s best dresses. Her response is to treat the situation as a huge joke - how amusing that such a stylishly turned-out young lady such as she should be mistaken for a parlour maid! - and sings an elegant little number that regularly breaks out in brilliant peals of laughter. She can well afford to laugh because she knows that Eisenstein, who has presented himself at the ball as the Marquis de Renard, shouldn’t be there either.